Aftermath
by DealingDearie
Summary: Loki left a lasting mark on each of the Avengers. Feedback is always appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

Tony doesn't sleep. He stays up all hours of the night, constantly working to improve his suits, and avidly ignores the way Pepper watches him, worrying her lip vigorously. Pepper herself is different. She forgets things, like a teapot on the stove (even when the whistling drives Tony to insanity) or a breakfast plate on his workbench (and he's starting to get a little hungry in the mornings).

They both dance around each other when the subject ever arises, the topic of Manhattan and how Tony's not planning on adding the other letters back onto Stark Tower, and it might seem like an easier life than it would be if they confronted it. But sometimes Tony falls asleep against a glass case or dozes off in the shower and in those brief moments, there is Manhattan and the A stands tall even when the other letters fall into oblivion, glowing like a beacon in a hopeless night sky.

There is Loki and there is a hand around his throat and he can't breathe until Pepper swoops down and saves him, the strawberry-haloed angel that shakes him from his nightmares. But sometimes Pepper needs saving, when she can actually remember why she walked into a room and then have it dissipate into another memory entirely, a jet flying away from Manhattan while the TV taunts her, a moment where she held her breath until she nearly forgot how to breathe.

There are times when they won't admit how much they've changed, how deep the damage runs, and then there are times when they will, when Tony slips into Pepper's room and wraps his arms around her as tightly as he can, grateful for the warmth, or maybe just the feeling of knowing you're not alone because he's only ever been alone, and they fight off the nightmares with the reassuring whispers and promises of 'I love you' that echo long into the night, like a lasting fire that burns against even the harshest wind.

Bruce looks behind him more often now. He puts his hands deep in his coat pockets as he walks, afraid to look down and see that they've turned green. He locks his doors with chains and extra measures just to be sure, because he can't be too sure ever again.

He glances at his right and at his left and then at his right again, just to know for certain that a green eyed god isn't smirking at him as he passes, blending in with the pedestrians as if it's as natural as breathing. He avoids mirrors, for fear of not only one but two monsters staring back at him and he never takes a shadow for anything less.

He doesn't step out into the sunlight too quickly, afraid to be so blinded by the light that he misses a glowing spear headed for his gut, and he never makes any more friends, wary of false faces that hide devilish grins. He still searches for a cure, or a temporary fix, but he's mostly at peace with his life, the creature within him, and he only searches for a cure because he wants to have one at hand the next time someone has the urge to use him. He has too much blood on his hands already.

Clint avoids dark spaces, where things can crawl around and inside of you and no one can ever hear you scream. He stops and turns a corner when he sees someone with dark hair, afraid to be caught standing there when they turn around. He shies away from the whispers in his dreams, the voices that flip everything upside down and follow him when he wakes up, trying to pull him back.

His heart starts to race when he sees electric blue eyes, always wondering if there are more people still under the Tesseract's control, and he never sees the same person when he looks in the mirror. He sees the countless people he murdered and the lives he destroyed, all with a smile on his face. He steps out of the shower and imagines that he's stepping into a lake of scarlet blood, drowning for all eternity.

Natasha is unchanged, her voice as silent as ever, he gaze as calculating as it ever was, and yet she is different. Her eyes are no longer her own when she looks at her reflection in the glass of her window.

They are dark green, familiar, and taunting. On the rare occasion that she laughs at one of Clint's jokes, the noise that escapes her is deep and precise, maniacal and crazed, and she is startled out of her brief reverie to find that she never even laughed at all.

Her nightmares are recurring, stuck on repeat in the room of her childhood, where everything was dark and red and evil to the core, and then her dreams are tainted by the image of _him_ laughing at her false pain as if it is the best moment in the world, the best moment of his life, and he is killing and fighting and staring at her as if he knows her deepest secrets, and maybe he does.

His ways are her ways and her mind is his mind and they are perhaps one in the same, blood splattered across their ledgers like ink across paper, and what frightens her the most is that the fact might not frighten her very much at all.

Steve is getting selfish, keeping more to himself now that everything's passed. He clings to his life more than ever, more so than when he would give it up in a heartbeat for someone he barely knew, and the thought unnerves him.

He's growing selfish because there is so much more to lose than before, when he had one friend and one goal and one death, when simple times hid nothing except for bombs.

There are aliens now, aliens with fleets out to get every corner of the world to bend to their will, and there is power and magic and mind control and other worlds that he never could have imagined 70 years ago. He might hug Natasha a little tighter when they finally see each other after so long, and he might talk to Thor a little longer next time he sees the god, and he might even take shooting tips from Clint if the urge arises.

He might stay and listen to Bruce and Tony ramble on about science and bridges and weapons just because he doesn't want to forget their voices as he has forgotten Bucky's. He is selfish because when everything crumbles, when he loses everything a second time around, he wants to know that he did everything he possibly could to freeze the moments he had with them into the very memory of time itself.

**Please R&R! I don't know whether to add on to this or not. Should I include Thor? Loki? Any more? Feedback is always appreciated! All rights go to their respectful owners. **


	2. Chapter 2

Thor does not smile as much as he once did, and he doesn't blink as often, for fear of missing some unmentionable _thing_ coming to kill him. He doesn't sleep very well, for his dreams are plagued by nightmarish images, and he holds tight to Jane, if ever holds her at all. She sighs against him and he doesn't know why.

Because she missed him, loves him? Or because he has not held her in so long that she forgot what it felt like?

He doesn't want to bask in the feel of her against him, her warm body wrapped up within his embrace, because he doesn't want to have something to look back on, thinking of how wonderful it was. He doesn't want to remember the peace he had felt, only to be overcome with the greatest grief when he realizes that it's been taken from him. Taken-by Loki, or some other person that hates him.

_Loki_.

Thor can't even think of his name without tears blurring his vision, a film of hatred covering his heart just as sorrow pierces it.

There is no love, now, but there is _something_.

A ghost, maybe.

A quickly fading echo of laughter, boyish grins from so very long ago.

The imprint of a hand in his, small eyes and small face and small smile, running through fields and racing on horseback, the memory of a long lost voice ringing through Thor's head.

It all makes him hurt deep inside, and at the same time strengthens him, hardens his heart for the next time around, when Loki delves even further amidst the insanity he's plunged into, and the mere thought of facing his brother once again-locked up in the deepest dungeons of Asgard-chills Thor to the bone, and not even the comforting presence of wonderful, lovely, kind Jane can warm him.

**Please R&R! Feedback of any kind is always appreciated! ;)**

**People mentioned Thor's perspective, and Loki's is next.**

**Any more I should add? **


	3. Chapter 3

Loki shakes, in both the dark confines of writhing shadows and the blinding shine of daylight, and the tremors reach every expanse of his skin, cutting deeper and deeper to the bone. He sleeps, but tries to avoid it, too fearful of the whispers that haunt him, and his eyes are darker, and he feels like noticing it because that is the _only_ thing to notice, sitting in a glass prison with just his gaunt reflection to keep him company.

His cheekbones are more pronounced, and he sometimes hooks a finger behind the bone just to see if it hurts-_does he even feel pain anymore?_-and has long since abandoned his surprise at the fact that it doesn't. His hair is tangled, knotted in all sorts of places, dark ebony giving way to faded color as he rots in his cell, and his limbs feel as heavy as anvils, despite looking pounds lighter-he's just skin, and he's starting to lose the small amount of muscle tone he once had.

His magic, as well, is depleted, and it feels as if someone took his insides and tied them up and shoved them back in, knotting the ends off and connecting them to other places. He feels as if his very essence has been taken, and Loki thinks, fleetingly-because he can barely hold a thought for longer than a few seconds-, that his soul, his core, has been stolen, and all that's left is a decaying hole that will soon swallow him from the inside out.

At first, he'd talk to the guards, mock them and their stoic ways, tasting the fear lying in their eyes and drawing from it, but he has given up on taunting them, instead choosing to sit and look at the white of the floor, or the white of the ceiling, or the faint transparency of the glass walls, and he hopes that if he looks at himself long enough, he will see what Frigga sees, or what Thor once saw, or what Odin saw so many years ago. He watches and waits and sits and hopes that he will find that glimmer of hope his brother-_not, hatred, hurt, pain, kill_-had spoken so stubbornly of.

Maybe he will look inside himself and see the reason why Frigga had embraced him, given him sweet shelter within her arms as he'd wept in his youth, lovingly carding her long fingers through his mess of black hair, kissing the top of her son's (_monster's_) head.

_Why_ had she done such things, such wonderful actions that smothered the most awful lie?

Loki finds that he's beginning to wonder about a lot of things, and each question takes him deeper and deeper into a pit he cannot climb out of, and the gleam in his eyes flares up at the idea, and then it dies just as quickly, and he thinks-_flare, die, flare, struggle, struggle_-_fight, fight, fight. _

_Fight_ the questions, and the pain, and the sickness deep inside him.

_Fight_ the lies, and the torment, and the years leaving bright flashes at the backs of his eyes.

_Fight_, but he can't, and he rests limply against the wall, and it hurts to move because there are still fresh cuts and bruises across his body, and he doesn't want to mistake the rustle of his tattered clothing for the eerie laughter of those who-_hurt, something as sweet, kill, agony, agony_-will, sooner or later, come for him.

Loki does not fight because he can't, and the battle inside his mind finally gives out, both sides losing as they're consumed by his innate desire to just_ be_-to take and control and _have_-and he resists the urge to let his skin turn blue-he doesn't want to see the monster on the outside, too.

_Flare, fight, fight…fade. _

**THE END. I was going to do a few more, but I think it's best that I just stick with the main people. Please R&R! Feedback is always appreciated! ;) **

**Thanks for reviewing, everybody! ;) **


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